Portable devices such as mobile phones, smartphones, and tablet computers have become more common among individuals. A large amount of data may be stored on these devices which may be needed to be backed up and/or synchronized to other devices. Cloud computing technology may permit a user to back up their data on a remote server and/or synchronize there data to other devices.
Application state data is data used to record the running status of a computer application. One example of application state data is a game save for a game application. A game save is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a user operating the game application. The game save can be reloaded later, so that the user can continue where she stopped. Typically, a user instructs the game application to generate a game save (i.e. save the game) to prevent the loss of progress in the game, especially when she is interrupted or ending a game session.
Sharing game saves among users has been common for many years. Sharing was originally achieved by swapping memory cards having the game saves stored thereon allowing the users to, for example, aid one another in unlocking particular features of a game application. With the growing popularity of the Internet, users started to upload their game saves to Internet. By downloading a game save from an Internet server, a user can continue the progress of the game on the device on which he played the game or another device such as a computer, game console, or smart phone.
However, to achieve the goal of continuing the progress on another different device, the user needs to deliberately instruct the device to save the game progress (i.e. game save) and to upload the game save to a server or a memory card. Then the user needs to download the game from the server or the memory card to the other device, and instruct the other device to load the game save. The whole process is tedious and requires considerable user intervention. Furthermore, the process only works for game applications that are specifically designed with game saving functionalities. In addition to game saves, other digital content on a device can also share among users.
Unfortunately, sometimes application developers encrypt data needed to be backed up or synched or the data needed to be backed up or synched may have certain constraints that cause the back up or synchronization to fail.